HC gives earful for ‘earphone’ drama in House

HYDERABAD: Tuesday’s marathon hearing on the state legislative Assembly’s appeal seeking retention of the expulsion of two Congress MLAs — Komatireddy Venkat Reddy and SA Sampath Kumar — had a lot of drama and verbal joust. The bench of Chief Justice TB Radhakrishnan and Justice V Ramasubramanian gave some anxious moments to senior counsel Mukul Rohatgi, who was appearing for the Asembly, when it abruptly stopped him and asked him whether the authorities are accepting the jurisdiction of the HC.

This poser came mainly because the authorities were hitherto maintaining a stand that they need not respond to order of single judge who set aside the expulsions. They did not implement the order nor did they prefer an appeal. The counsel explained to the court their initial understanding and stand was erroneous and said: “No doubt, your lordships have jurisdiction. There is no question of courts not having jurisdiction”.

There are limitations. When the Speaker is acting as a tribunal, his decisions are amenable to judicial review. But not on the procedures within the house, he said, adding that the aggrieved MLAs can approach the court when they were arrested but not when they were expelled. The bench too explained to him that “ the judiciary is the only place where you can come to it and tell that courts have no jurisdiction to hear a particular matter. There were scores of instances where courts have accepted that they have no jurisdiction to hear particular pleas”. If there were procedural irregularities within the house we will not look at them. But when there is substantial illegality, we will certainly look into it,” the bench said.

When the Assembly counsel was speaking about the two Congress MLAs throwing earphones towards the governor, the bench said: “They missed their target” and this left the court hall in splits. The earphones allegedly hit one of the eyes of the LC chairman. Rohatgi said that it all started with the speech of the governor “who kick-started the session”. The bench said that given the current context, the word ‘kick-start’ may be inappropriate. The senior counsel was quick to acknowledge and said he should have used a different word.